Top 500 Steven Erikson Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Ah, Meese has brought us her finest goblets! A moment, whilst Kruppe sweeps out cobwebs, insect husks and other assorted proofs of said goblets’ treasured value.”

— Steven Erikson

352. “Look not to our unknown benefactor for salvation. This is humanity’s war upon itself and the only salvation possible must be found in the eyes of our brother, our sister, our neighbor. Do find the courage, my beloved friend, to meet that gaze.”

— Steven Erikson

353. “This, then, is friendship. A family you choose. What you give to it, you give freely. What you withhold from it, measures its depth.”

— Steven Erikson

354. “I, Borduke of the 6th squad in the 9th Company of the 8th Legion, swear on the downy belly of the Queen of Dreams that the creature before me is a natural, unaltered Birdshit scorpion, and may my father’s ghost remain in its tomb, since the inheritance was mine to lose anyway, right? Dead means you don’t care any more, right? It had better, because if it doesn’t, then I’m doomed to paternal haunting for the rest of my days.”

— Steven Erikson

355. “It is not enough to wish for a better world for the children. It is not enough to shield them with ease and comfort. Lostara Yil, if we do not sacrifice our own ease, our own comfort, to make the future’s world a better one, then we curse our own children. We leave them a misery they do not deserve; we leave them a host of lessons unearned.”

— Steven Erikson

356. “Rigga, Riggalai the Seer, the wax-witch who trapped souls in candles and burned them. Souls devoured in flame –.”

— Steven Erikson

357. “Light exploded behind Felisin’s eyes as she sprawled sideways.”

— Steven Erikson

358. “His agonized scream rode the cascading waves of power as they swept across the terrace.”

— Steven Erikson

359. “Then we’re dead all that much sooner. So it goes.”

— Steven Erikson

360. “Peace reigned in silence, inside and out, in isolation and exhaustion.”

— Steven Erikson

361. “Not that freedom ensured happiness. Indeed, to be free was to live in absence. Of responsibilities, of loyalties, of the pressures that expectation imposed.”

— Steven Erikson

362. “It is the legacy of most intelligent beings to revel in slaughter for a time,’ Haut replied. ‘In this we play at being gods. In this, we lie to ourselves with delusions of omnipotence. There is but one measure to the wisdom of a people, and that is the staying hand. Fail in restraint and murder thrives in your eyes, and all your claims to civilization ring hollow.”

— Steven Erikson

363. “The rush of the river was a voice, a presence. Water flowed indifferent to the heave and plunge of the sun, the shrouded moon and the slow spin of the stars. The sound reached them in a song without words, and all effort to grasp its meaning was hopeless, for, like the water itself, one could not grasp hold of sound. The flow was ceaseless and immeasurable and just as stillness did not in fact exist, so neither did true, absolute silence.”

— Steven Erikson

364. “The end of the world is announced with a kind word.”

— Steven Erikson

365. “Guilt is the first weed we pluck, to keep the garden pretty and smelling sweet.”

— Steven Erikson

366. “They take us at this moment, these unwavering men and women who presume to rule over us, and but point us in the direction of a weaker victim. This is their game, knowing or not, and as ever the assumption is that we’ll never turn on our masters – so long as an enemy remains within reach of our blunted, frustrated fury. And.”

— Steven Erikson

367. “You’ll not have me, Lord, because you can’t.”

— Steven Erikson

368. “Is the universe holographic? Probably. Get microscopic enough and you start seeing pixels. I don’t know about you, but that makes me laugh. Until I think about how easy it is to hack a program. Any program.”

— Steven Erikson

369. “War needs no gods, only mortal contestants, two enemies and whatever reasons they invent in order to justify killing each other.”

— Steven Erikson

370. “To love in absence is to float on ever still waters. No sudden currents, no treacherous tides, no possibility of drowning.”

— Steven Erikson

371. “A savage awareness seemed to ride the spinning sand, reaching relentlessly past the folds of their telaban, a thousand abrasive fingers clawing paths across their skin. Loose cloth and rope ends spiked upward, whipping with urgent rhythm. The roar filled the air, filled their skulls.”

— Steven Erikson

372. “Something’s nibbling my spleen!”

— Steven Erikson

373. “They didn’t shelter their own, didn’t feed their own, didn’t heal their own, and yet, in the midst of all this inhumanity, they held themselves as the pinnacle of human civilization.”

— Steven Erikson

374. “The courage of husbands is directly proportionate to the proximity of the wife.”

— Steven Erikson

375. “They are a generation that has tasted blood, and where horror fades, nostalgia seeps in. In war all is simple, and there is appeal in this. Who among us is comforted by confusion, uncertainty?”

— Steven Erikson

376. “Oh, what a miserable man you are! If you’re wrong and he tries to bite me, I will be very upset with you, Mok. I will lay waste to your loins. I will make your eyes crossed so that everyone who looks at you and your silly mask will not be able to help but laugh. And I will think of other things, too, I assure you.”

— Steven Erikson

377. “Absence of doubt? No, nothing so egotistic as that. Nimander has plenty of doubts, so many that he’s lost his fear of them. He accepts them as easily as anything else. Is that the secret? Is that the very definition of greatness?”

— Steven Erikson

378. “Love could be such a squalid emotion: burning bright in the midst of pathos, the subject of pity and contempt, it blazed with brilliant stupidity all the same.”

— Steven Erikson

379. “Fanaticism was so popular. There had to be a reason for that, didn’t there? Some vast reward to the end of thinking, some great bliss to the blessing of idiocy.”

— Steven Erikson

380. “He had let age take hold of him, as if ennui was an old man’s final gift to himself – the blessed embrace of indifference in the guise of wisdom.”

— Steven Erikson

381. “Secrets have power so long as they remain secrets.”

— Steven Erikson

382. “I was once told that dreams are worthy things,” said Emancipor, “even if they end up in misery and unending horror.” “Ah, and who told you that?” He shrugged. “My wife.”

— Steven Erikson

383. “People who make up their minds about something never listen to advice – especially when it’s to the contrary.”

— Steven Erikson

384. “Who in their dreams is not omnipotent? If in sleep I grow wings and fly high above the land, it does not mean I will awaken cloaked in feathers. We are gods in our dreams. Disaster strikes when we come to believe the same is true in our real lives.”

— Steven Erikson

385. “And somehow they would be less than human then. The game the mind must play to unleash destruction.”

— Steven Erikson

386. “Eventually every man reaches a point where every memory is unwelcome.”

— Steven Erikson

387. “Reconciliation does not demand that one side surrender to the other. The simple, mutual recognition that mistakes were made is in itself a closing of the divide.”

— Steven Erikson

388. “How many of us bow before a god in the desperate hope that we can somehow shape our fate? Praying to that familiar face pushes away our terror of the unknown – the unknown being the future. Who knows, maybe these Tiste Andii are the only ones among us all who see the truth, the truth being oblivion.”

— Steven Erikson

389. “Bloodflies rode her drawn gasps into her mouth, biting as she gagged and spat.”

— Steven Erikson

390. “To draw a weapon is to announce an end to uncertainty.”

— Steven Erikson

391. “I will answer in kind. No act is final. Another inevitably awaits.”

— Steven Erikson

392. “Stop talking like a sailor, Adjutant Stormy,’ Nok said. A smile amidst the red, bristling beard. ‘Ain’t no Adjutant any more, Admiral.’ Thin brows rose, and Nok said, ‘Title alone gifts the bearer with intelligence?’ Stormy nodded. ‘That it does, sir. Which is why Gesler’s a sergeant and I’m a corporal. We get stupider every year that passes.’ ‘And.”

— Steven Erikson

393. “I hear Seven Cities natives grow fruit just so they can eat the larvae in them.”

— Steven Erikson

394. “The air swirled into darkness around Paran. He blinked, saw the trees of the estate garden rising before him.”

— Steven Erikson

395. “Proof that the freedoms once accorded non-Letherii peoples were born of both paternalism and a self-serving posturing as a benign overseer. What is given is taken away, just like that.”

— Steven Erikson

396. “Soldiers have no imagination, meaning they’re capable of vast surprises.”

— Steven Erikson

397. “Hands were such extraordinary tools, she mused. Tools, weapons, clumsy and deft, numb and tactile. Among tribal hunters, they could speak, a flurry of gestures eloquent in silence. But they could not taste. Could not hear. Could not weep. For all that, they killed so easily.”

— Steven Erikson

398. “When those dreams in that unreachable future suddenly rise up around you, how can you not be blinded to their truths? All at once, it is here. All at once, you are living in its very midst. Why then must you seek to pull away? He.”

— Steven Erikson

399. “It seems, captain, that as her power grows, her tolerance diminishes. They are like lodestones, pushing each other away. Does power not grant immunity? Does power not strengthen the armour; does power not find assurance in itself? Can it be that those who hold the most power also know the greatest fear?”

— Steven Erikson

400. “The creature spun, tumbling, then twisted round to face its attacker, rage blazing in its skull.”

— Steven Erikson